


we can sneak out after dark

by boggyfroggy



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Campaign: Fantasy High (Dimension 20), M/M, There will be shenanigans, and fabian. who the fuck knows, and i am more than happy to contribute, brief mention of self harm, fandom milestone, for hallariel being hallariel, i feel like a soulmate au is some kind of, its like 1 sentence and nothing happens but better safe than sorry, just general idiots being idiots, riz is one hundred percent oblivious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-01-29 22:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21417379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boggyfroggy/pseuds/boggyfroggy
Summary: Riz Gukgak believes in a lot of things.What Riz Gukgak does not believe in is soulmates.
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Riz Gukgak, Riz Gukgak & Fabian Aramais Seacaster, Riz Gukgak & The Bad Kids, Riz Gukgak/Fabian Aramais Seacaster
Comments: 31
Kudos: 259





	1. first not-quite meetings

**Author's Note:**

> 69th fic in this tag baby ;)
> 
> (title from heartthrob by superfruit)

Riz Gukgak believes in a lot of things. 

He’s what you might call a ‘sleuth,’ dedicated to finding and understanding things that no one else can. Some people might call him a crazy conspiracy theorist, or that weird briefcase kid (thank god he grew out of that nickname) who strings up case evidence in his locker, but that just means he’s passionate about what he does. Sure, Riz might still be waiting on his license - his mother hasn’t gotten back to him on that yet - but he’s a hard-as-nails private investigator through and through. 

His belief in the strange and mysterious has gotten him pretty far in life, he’d say. Over the last summer, he spent months tirelessly scouring every corner store in town, looking for a glimpse of the grinning cat who seemingly couldn’t be caught on camera. You’d think that in a world like this, where magic is like, real and shit, people would be more open to believing this kind of thing, but somehow no one would give Riz the time of day when he told them he’d seen it. He didn’t take any of it to heart, of course. One day, when he solved his first real mystery and made it big as a detective, they’d understand the error of their ways. One day.

Riz Gukgak believes in the elusive and the phantasmagorical. He believes in conspiracies, he believes in his mother, and he believes in his profound investigative skills. He believes, with a firm, catlike gaze and a heart filled with hope, that he will one day prove to the world that he’s just as capable as anyone else. He believes that he can find Penny Luckstone and get her home safe.

What Riz Gukgak does not believe in is soulmates.

When he was young, he used to count the days until he got a soulmark of his own. He’d asked his mother to show him her mark hundreds of times - a simple “Sklonda, isn’t it? It’s a pleasure to meet you.” - and his father, when he was still alive - “Funny, you’re not the first person tonight to say that to me.” He’d laugh at the stories they’d tell of their clumsy first dance, and marvel at his mother’s descriptions. How it felt, looking into Pok’s eyes and hearing the words engraved around her forearm, that little jolt deep within her stomach telling her that yes, this is it, this is The One and how she could tell he felt the same. 

When Pok passed away, the stories lost a bit of their shine. Riz could see the look of deep sadness on his mother’s face whenever she looked at the words inscribed deep along her skin, and though at first he didn’t understand it, he knew better than to ask.

Still, Riz secretly held on to the hope that maybe, just maybe, his soulmate would last forever. It was difficult, but he kept that hope alive as long as he could. On those quiet, sleepless nights Riz spent alone, lying in bed pretending to sleep even though his mom wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours to catch him, he wondered what they would be like. Tall, maybe, though everyone was tall to him. He was expected to only grow to maybe 4 feet, if he was lucky. So maybe they would be funny, athletic maybe, with beautiful eyes that he could get lost in. They could pick him up and spin him around, and Riz would know that everything was going to be alright, because they were soulmates and their love would last forever.

It was a childish dream to have and Riz knew it, so he kept his daydreams to himself. No use inviting any more ridicule from his peers. None of the jeering bothered him any, at the end of the day, because there was someone out there who one day would love him no matter what. It was comforting, that hope, as ridiculous and chimerical as it sounded out loud. He just couldn’t wait for his 13th birthday.

When the date finally rolled around, Riz was absolutely consumed with excitement. Today was the day it happened - the day the constant dark-spotted green of his skin gave way to letters, in his soulmate’s handwriting, the first words they’d ever say to him. At 13 years old as of three and a half hours, Riz prided himself on his detective skills. He had a very high insight, after all. Once he knew what the words were, he knew he’d be able to find them. In his mind, he pictured how the scene would go;

Riz, perhaps waiting at a bus stop (he didn’t ever take the bus anymore, but he’d seen enough scenes like this in movies), soaking wet because he’d forgotten his umbrella (he would absolutely never forget an umbrella, he always checked the weather eighteen times before leaving the house and kept a spare in his briefcase), wondering whether the day could possibly go worse. Then, a good-looking stranger would appear, offer Riz his umbrella, and utter the words etched perfectly across Riz’s skin. The two would lock eyes, and Riz would reply, seeing the recognition dawn on the stranger’s face. They’d chat, Riz would hastily scrawl a heart on a business card and hand it to his soulmate, and he would laugh and they’d part with promises of meeting up again. 

A picture perfect scene. And incredibly unrealistic, if Riz were to think about his daydream afterwards, but dissecting it too thoroughly sucked all the fun out of it. Sure, he was a very straightforward and analytical person most of the time, and he always preferred mystery films, but he’d seen one or two rom-coms in his time! Sue him!

Meet-cute or not, once Riz knew what his soulmate would first say to him, he was only a few introductions away from finding The One. He’d been practicing in the mirror for the past week with homemade business cards made from scraps of lined paper and a cool professional-looking pen he’d found on the sidewalk once. He just had to introduce himself and listen for the words. Maybe he’d make some other friends along the way, too. 

Riz waited with bated breath all day, nerves tingling with excitement, awaiting the tell-tale buzzing feeling of the words writing themselves across his skin. The clock ticked, and ticked, and ticked by, with no results. 

3:30 AM. 

5:00 AM. 

7:30 AM. 

11:46 AM. 

All without a single word.

Maybe he was being too impatient. Riz felt his stomach growl - he’d been so excited he forgot breakfast was a thing that existed - and had just decided to get up and grab something really quick when he felt it.

It was a fleeting sensation. The muscles in his left upper arm tensed for a moment, just a split second of tingling that felt like a shock to his whole system, nearly causing him to fall over entirely. He felt sick, he felt anxious, he felt absolutely elated. The moment he’d been waiting for. Riz rolled up his sleeve, craning his neck to try and read it, but it was upside-down, and after a moment of attempting to turn his whole head upside down he remembered that mirrors existed. He scurried over to the bathroom mirror with his heart pounding in his pointy goblin ears in anticipation of what his words would say. He pointed his arm towards the mirror and thanked his lucky stars (or stones, thanks Penny) that he’d taught himself to read backwards.

He read it. And read it. And read it again. Over, and over, and over and over and over again until his eyes strained and his head swam and his stomach felt like it had sunk down into the floor and continued to dig deeper and deeper until it came out the other side of the earth. No matter how many times he read the words, they didn’t change. No matter how much he wished they would.

“Hey.”

That was it? “Hey”? After years of waiting, and hoping, and waiting some more, all he got was a stupid fucking “Hey”?!

Bullshit. Bull. Shit.

Riz felt like crying. Riz felt like screaming. Riz felt like clawing his hair out and scratching the wretched, fancy, loopy tattoo from his skin. Because this wasn’t fair.

There was no fucking way he would be able to tell who his soulmate was. How many times had people said the word ‘hey’ to him? Random people on the streets who he’d never seen again sometimes said ‘hey,’ because they said ‘hey’ to everybody they’d ever met and everybody they would ever meet. Hell, Riz did the same thing! People said ‘hey’ every single fucking day!

Riz stood there in front of the mirror in shocked, stony silence for a few more minutes, trying to make sense of his situation in his head. He had no chance. There was absolutely no chance in the Nine Hells that he would find his soulmate. Not with just a ‘hey.’ He could have already met them, and just hadn’t known, because they’d just said fucking ‘Hey’ and that was that, no use remembering that interaction! 

He felt every soulmate-related hope he’d ever harbored shatter in an instant. His family was just… cursed, maybe. His mom lost her soulmate, and now he’d never find his. At least his mom had closure, and had a chance to start again. Riz would never be able to start in the first place.

Whatever. It’s not like it was ever that important to him, anyway.

With that avenue completely and thoroughly shut down, Riz filed the word ‘soulmate’ away deep within the file cabinets in the recesses of his mind, shoving it down so he’d never have to think about it again. He greeted his mom when she got home like nothing was wrong. Sure, that night he found himself hugging his mother as tightly as he could, as she whispered consolations into his hair assuring him that things would work out okay, but nothing was wrong. He was fine. He would be fine. Everything was just… fine.

Life went on. The world kept on spinning, and Riz buried himself further into his conspiracy theories. A year passed. Penny Luckstone went missing, and by then Riz had completely forgotten about the whole soulmate fiasco. He had bigger fish to fry! Mysteries to solve! Babysitters to find! Business cards to print! Absolutely no time to worry about a thing so stupid and superstitious.

Riz Gukgak had accepted his reality. So when a tall, silver-haired half elf brushed by him in the hallway on the first day of school, he didn’t think twice before attempting to hand out yet another business card. He tried to go about his usual introduction, “Hey, I’m - woah, holy shit, okay,” but was interrupted by the boy muttering a mindless ‘hey,’ not really seeing him, and elbowing him out of the way on his warpath towards some unsuspecting half-orc boy. He definitely didn’t notice when the boy briefly glanced back towards him before shaking his head and continuing on. 

That’s three nat ones in a row. 

With absolutely no new knowledge under his belt that might make his life a little easier in the long run, Riz skittered off down the hallway, and he was fine. In the soon-to-come chaos of evil lunch ladies and climbing into a corn monster’s asshole, he’d forget about this encounter entirely. Then he’d go back to his conspiracy board, put up a few new strings, and continue on with his life like nothing had ever happened. Riz Gukgak’s life was a little bit all over the place, but he was totally, undoubtedly, positively, indisputably fine.

Meanwhile, Fabian Aramais Seacaster lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering where the hell he went wrong.


	2. past celebrations and present realizations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief look into Fabian's side of the story, with... probably more existential crises than is healthy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ssssssssssssssso it's been a couple months, whoops :/ i got super busy and then just totally forgot this existed! but thankfully i'm quarantined now so i have all the time in the world ;D

First things first, Fabian Seacaster is not a bad person. Just putting that out there.

He’s a bit of an opportunist sometimes, sure. And he’s a little self-centered, but when you’re as great as he is, who wouldn’t be? And sure, he’s a little too volatile to be considered a “healthy and adjusted” teenage boy, but that’s just genetics, he can’t help that. 

So he has his flaws. He does his best to shove them as far into the back of his mind as he possibly can so he doesn’t think about them, but they’re there. He knows about them. Those don’t make him a bad person. He is Fabian Aramais Seacaster, son of renowned privateer - sorry, pirate, he keeps messing that up - Bill Seacaster, greatest man to ever live, master of the blade and flexer of the rippling muscles. He’s amazing.

That, however, doesn’t prevent Fabian from feeling a little bit shitty sometimes.

His thirteenth birthday was an absolute spectacle, one that he’ll never forget as long as he lives. His papa was always a very… how should he put it, enthusiastic man. He never put less than 110% into literally anything he did, whether it be an epic swashbuckling adventure or something as theoretically simple as eating his dinner. There was always some kind of potentially life-threatening pirate shenanigans going on, neither Fabian nor his mother ever had even a moment of calm while Bill was around. This suited Fabian just fine; he was his father’s son, after all, but maybe he understood just a little bit why Hallariel drank so much wine. 

Fabian remembers waking up that morning with the beginnings of butterflies deep in his stomach. He didn’t immediately register what day it was, and sort of lay there in bed, blinking the sleep out of his eyes and wondering what was so special about this morning in particular. Birds singing outside his window, the soft and slightly slurred humming of his mother puttering about in the other room, everything so peaceful... He could simply close his eyes and bask in the soft glow of the morning.

Of course, that was the moment his father chose to kick his bedroom door down for the third time in as many days, hooting and hollering at the top of his lungs and spooking Fabian so hard he felt his soul slip briefly into the astral plane.

“LOOK ALIVE, MY DARLING BOY! Today’s yer special day!” shouted Bill, flashing a signal out Fabian’s bedroom window to trigger a series of celebratory cannonball blasts from the front lawn. 

“Ugh… Papa, it’s too early for this,” groaned Fabian, mournfully draping an arm over his eyes.

“Too early? What do ye mean, too early? I let ye sleep in this mornin’!” said Bill, having the audacity to sound affronted.

“You did?” 

“Yes! A whole three-and-a-half minutes!”

Fabian hummed, glancing at the clock at his bedside. It had an alarm function, but he never needed it. 

“Huh. That is a lot of time to sleep in,” conceded Fabian, dragging himself up into a sitting position. “May I ask, papa, what’s the occasion?”

“What’s the occasion? WHAT’S THE OCCASION?!” exclaimed Bill, loud enough for Fabian to immediately regret asking. “Why, it’s only yer thirteenth birthday! The day ye get yer soulmark! It’s a day for celebration, it is!”

Realization dawned across Fabian’s chiselled features, as finally he understood the strange feeling he’d felt since waking up. It was a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and… something else that he couldn’t quite identify. He wasn’t sure if it was something he’d ever felt before. He’d have to ask Cathilda about it later.

Bill charged on through some long-winded speech about his own soulmark, his first meeting with Hallariel, and all the wacky, raunchy, and morally dubious adventures the two of them had gone on during the first months of their relationship that Fabian was only half listening to. By the time Fabian tuned back in, his father had just finished rambling something about Hallariel saving his life by single-handedly taking down a giant octopus with nothing but a string of seaweed and a broken high heeled shoe.

“Anyway, my darling boy, I hope you’re excited about today! Someday, ye’ll meet someone willin’ to wrestle a giant monster for you, and today marks the beginning of yer adventure. Cathilda’ll be around shortly with the itinerary for today’s festivities.”

Bill smiled, giving his son a firm clap on the shoulder and a big kiss on the cheek. “I love you, son. Be careful of the sparklers, by the way - I stole ‘em in a bit of a rush, and some of them may or may not explode on contact.”

Fabian grinned back, calling a soft “I love you too, Papa,” after his father as he jauntily left the room. The cannonballs still exploding outside mirrored the intense, delighted thumping of his heart as he anticipated the joyous celebration waiting for him just downstairs.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of streamers and confetti and charred, smoking pirates crawling out of the latest large-scale explosion from the front lawn. His mother was drinking, as usual, but had swapped her usual fine wine for a celebratory champagne, which Fabian snuck a small taste of and immediately hated. He had to eat another entire plate of kippers (you’re the best, Cathilda) to wash the taste out of his mouth.  
By the time evening came around, he’d been so busy being buffeted around having the time of his life that he’d entirely forgotten about the soulmark thing. So when he felt it, a tingling shock of sensation around the skin of his stomach, he very nearly passed the fuck out.

“Papa, Papa I felt it! It’s here, on my stomach, I felt it!” called Fabian, the feeling from earlier that morning returning at full force like a punch to the gut. Bill let out a delighted cackle, swooping down to comfortingly squeeze his son’s shoulders. 

“Show us then, boyo! What’s it say?” 

Fabian reached down to the hem of his shirt, just about to pull it up when the feeling suddenly intensified. Anticipation, excitement… and that third thing, stopping him completely in his tracks. He felt like it had somehow reached out from his stomach and physically grabbed his wrist to still it. It crept up his arms and between his tensing shoulders and threaded its way up and around his spine, chilling him to the bone and causing his throat to close up. Fabian felt his heart pounding out of his control as the feeling gripped his body and his mind began to race.

What would it say? He’d never really given it much thought before. What would their handwriting look like? Would it be fancy, loopy cursive like his own, or something different? Would it be a greeting, or something said in passing? Would he be able to recognize it when he heard it? And… what would they be like? The person behind the writing? He knew they were supposed to be his soulmate and all, but would they really like him? Well, of course they would, he’s Fabian Aramais Seacaster, but would they like him? 

This was all way too sudden. Maybe he should’ve stayed quiet long enough to process.

No matter, though! His parents were waiting, he noticed as he broke out of the sudden surge of anxiety, and Fabian would hate to disappoint. He took one final breath to steady himself and pulled up his shirt.

The location of it was pretty counter-intuitive, he noticed first. It was positioned weirdly, and not to mention upside-down from his vantage point so he couldn’t read it. The handwriting, though, was thick and scratchy, spelling out a short, choppy sentence.

“What- erm, Papa, what does it say?”

Bill scratched his beard a moment before replying. “Why, I think it says… ‘Hey, I’m - woah, holy shit, okay,” he repeated, pausing a few times as he did so to squint at the tattoo. 

He looked back up into his son’s eyes with a hearty guffaw. 

“I think ye’ll run into ‘em, boyo! Literally!” Bill chortled, slapping Fabian on the back. Fabian chuckled at the mental image that produced, taking a moment to mull over the words in his head.

‘Hey, I’m - woah, holy shit, okay.’ A little bizarre, but he could work with it! A very specific sequence of words. He’d have to listen very closely to make sure whoever it was said the words exactly right. The anxiety in Fabian’s chest lifted a little as the party resumed around him. It wasn’t as romantic as he thought it’d be, but then again, his mother’s just said, “KABOOM, MOTHERFUCKER” across her shoulder blades, so that wasn’t too abnormal. He felt better.

The birthday party went on late into the night, but Fabian retired early, citing nausea from eating too many kippers. Only Cathilda questioned this, having seen the young master eat many, many more in a shorter amount of time, but respectfully didn’t bring it up.

That night, lying in bed, Fabian lost himself in his imagination, creating images of what his illusory soulmate might look like until he drifted off into another peaceful sleep.

Three years later finds Fabian Aramais Seacaster lying awake in the same bed, though having grown a foot or so and gained quite a bit of muscle mass, and with none of the quiet serenity that had accompanied him the night of his thirteenth birthday. In fact, he was actually quite fucking stressed out.

So he’d been about to beat the fuck out of this half-orc kid, right? Nothing personal, he was just the biggest guy around, and Fabian had to make an impression, you know. Both on his plebeian classmates and on the kid’s face. You know how it is.

He’d been expecting a little scuffle. Maybe it would even escalate into a brawl. Fabian would come out victorious, of course, and assert his dominance over the masses as the son of the greatest privateer - pirate, god damn it - who’d ever lived. All in a day’s work.

What he had not been expecting was the scrawny little goblin kid who he would be agonizing over for the rest of the goddamn day.

So the kid said the words on his soulmark! Big deal! Fabian must not have heard him right, or something. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe the kid wasn’t even real, just a figment of his imagination manifested from his miniscule amount of stress over his first day of high school. Maybe he was dreaming, and the entire day hadn’t even happened. Maybe he was living in the Fantasy Matrix. Yes, that has to be it. His entire life was a lie -

Okay, woah, back it up there, Seacaster. No need to get that existential.

He just - he wasn’t expecting it, alright? He’d spent years memorizing the words written across his stomach, but he’d yet to actually hear them, so he sort of forgot it was a thing. Again. So he was totally blindsided. It made sense, in retrospect, that that’s how their meeting would go. The kid sounded kind of exasperated as Fabian shoved past him, so the ‘woah holy shit okay’ made sense. That tracks, that that’s the thing he would say. Fabian still can’t stop thinking about it.

The kid - god, that’s his soulmate, he should really make an effort to remember his freaking name - was pretty cool, actually, in the fucked up corn fight they’d experienced together. Everyone there was cool, and of course Fabian was the coolest, but the kid stuck out to him. First off, he brought a gun to school, a whole ass gun which was sick as hell, and climbed into a corn monster’s gaping asshole to rescue him?? Without even knowing him??? Fabian absolutely would not have done the same, so the thought was astonishing to him.

And… well, if he was being honest with himself, the kid - okay, he’s really beginning to feel bad about calling him ‘the kid,’ what was his name - right, Ball! The Ball, to be precise, how could he forget. Weird name, but okay. Anyway, The Ball was… kinda cute, not gonna lie. With his pointy ears and freckles and weird little hat. 

So maybe The Ball is his soulmate. There is absolutely no way in the Nine Hells that Fabian is going to tell him. As far as he knows, he didn’t even realize. There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes when Fabian saw him again in detention, even though Fabian’s heart was beating out of his incredibly toned and muscular chest. So Fabian was cursed to deal with this knowledge alone.

No, he was not a bad person for keeping quiet, he assured himself, he just - he needed time! To process! This very sudden and interesting turn of events! Fabian nodded vigorously to himself, even though he still felt a little bit shitty about the whole thing.

He’ll probably see The Ball again soon, when they meet up to talk about cornmageddon or whatever it was that happened earlier. Fabian can tell him then.

Yeah. He’ll totally bring it up then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (spoiler alert: he doesn't)
> 
> this was super fun to write, tbh? fabian i love u so much
> 
> feel free to drop a comment if you liked this chap!! with the end of sophomore year coming up im def looking to update a lot more frequently than i have been lol, as always feedback is appreciated!!!

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first real fanfiction ive ever written, and definitely the first one ive ever posted its also unedited so uh. idk lemme know how it is!
> 
> hope u enjoyed, and feel free to drop a comment if u liked it! im going for maybe 3 or 4 chapters, but that's subject to change. wish me luck lol


End file.
